WARP: A ICN architecture for social data

Social network companies maintain complete visibility and ownership of the data they store. However users should be able to maintain full control over their content. For this purpose, we propose WARP, an architecture based upon Information-Centric Networking (ICN) designs, which expands the scope of the ICN architecture beyond media distribution, to provide data control in social networks. The benefit of our solution lies in the lightweight nature of the protocol and in its layered design. With WARP, data distribution and access policies are enforced on the user side. Data can still be replicated in an ICN fashion but we introduce control channels, named \textit{thread updates}, which ensures that the access to the data is always updated to the latest control policy. WARP decentralizes the social network but still offers APIs so that social network providers can build products and business models on top of WARP. Social applications run directly on the user's device and store their data on the user's \textit{butler} that takes care of encryption and distribution. Moreover, users can still rely on third parties to have high-availability without renouncing their privacy

Sigmoid(x): secure distributed network storage

Secure data storage is a serious problem for computer users today, particularly in enterprise environments. As data requirements grow, traditional approaches of secured silos are showing their limitations. They represent a single – or at least, limited – point of failure, and require significant, and increasing, maintenance and overhead. Such solutions are totally unsuitable for consumers, who want a ‘plug and play’ secure solution for their increasing datasets – something with the ubiquity of access of Facebook or webmail. Network providers can provide centralised solutions, but that returns us to the first problem. Sigmoid(x) takes a completely different approach – a scalable, distributed, secure storage mechanism which shares data storage between the users themselves

An Analysis and Enumeration of the Blockchain and Future Implications

The blockchain is a relatively new technology that has grown in interest and potential research since its inception. Blockchain technology is dominated by cryptocurrency in terms of usage. Research conducted in the past few years, however, reveals blockchain has the potential to revolutionize several different industries. The blockchain consists of three major technologies: a peer-to-peer network, a distributed database, and asymmetrically encrypted transactions. The peer-to-peer network enables a decentralized, consensus-based network structure where various nodes contribute to the overall network performance. A distributed database adds additional security and immutability to the network. The process of cryptographically securing individual transactions forms a core service of the blockchain and enables semi-anonymous user network presence

Peer-to-Peer Secure Multi-Party Numerical Computation Facing Malicious Adversaries

We propose an efficient framework for enabling secure multi-party numerical computations in a Peer-to-Peer network. This problem arises in a range of applications such as collaborative filtering, distributed computation of trust and reputation, monitoring and other tasks, where the computing nodes is expected to preserve the privacy of their inputs while performing a joint computation of a certain function. Although there is a rich literature in the field of distributed systems security concerning secure multi-party computation, in practice it is hard to deploy those methods in very large scale Peer-to-Peer networks. In this work, we try to bridge the gap between theoretical algorithms in the security domain, and a practical Peer-to-Peer deployment. We consider two security models. The first is the semi-honest model where peers correctly follow the protocol, but try to reveal private information. We provide three possible schemes for secure multi-party numerical computation for this model and identify a single light-weight scheme which outperforms the others. Using extensive simulation results over real Internet topologies, we demonstrate that our scheme is scalable to very large networks, with up to millions of nodes. The second model we consider is the malicious peers model, where peers can behave arbitrarily, deliberately trying to affect the results of the computation as well as compromising the privacy of other peers. For this model we provide a fourth scheme to defend the execution of the computation against the malicious peers. The proposed scheme has a higher complexity relative to the semi-honest model. Overall, we provide the Peer-to-Peer network designer a set of tools to choose from, based on the desired level of security.Comment: Submitted to Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications Journal (PPNA) 200

Systematizing Decentralization and Privacy: Lessons from 15 Years of Research and Deployments

Decentralized systems are a subset of distributed systems where multiple authorities control different components and no authority is fully trusted by all. This implies that any component in a decentralized system is potentially adversarial. We revise fifteen years of research on decentralization and privacy, and provide an overview of key systems, as well as key insights for designers of future systems. We show that decentralized designs can enhance privacy, integrity, and availability but also require careful trade-offs in terms of system complexity, properties provided, and degree of decentralization. These trade-offs need to be understood and navigated by designers. We argue that a combination of insights from cryptography, distributed systems, and mechanism design, aligned with the development of adequate incentives, are necessary to build scalable and successful privacy-preserving decentralized systems